


10 years from now…

by pixiealtaira



Series: 30 Days of Lists challenge [27]
Category: Glee
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-13
Updated: 2020-04-13
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:22:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23626084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pixiealtaira/pseuds/pixiealtaira
Summary: Prompt 27.	10 years from now…Kurt has better things to do than attend his 10 yr reunion.
Series: 30 Days of Lists challenge [27]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1679446
Comments: 1
Kudos: 46





	10 years from now…

Kurt looked out over the audience. He found it rather ironic that the opening night of his play…the one he wrote and directed was the same night as his High School graduating class’s 10 yr. reunion.

Honestly it couldn’t have turned out better had he planned it.

His dad and Carole were in the front and center, next to Elliot and Adam and Sam…and Puck. And Beth. Kurt smiled at that. He’d sent Puck a ticket on a whim, thinking that maybe he’d rather have a reason to stay away and not be reminded of Lima and High School. He’d sent Beth and Shelby tickets as an extra reason for Puck to come. Shelby hadn’t been able to make it, but when she found out Burt and Carole would be there she was happy to let Beth attend. 

He was a bit nervous about the play. He’d based it off High School and Glee club. When he first wrote the play, for his senior project at NYADA, he’d told the story from the point of view from the character that represented him. And it had turned out good…but like his project mentor had pointed out, telling it from his point of view didn’t really sell the musical as a comedy, which is what he’d set out to create. Even with that critique, Kurt got top scores on his project and had some bites of interest. His mentor encouraged him to rewrite the first scenes from different characters points of view.

Kurt had spent the next year doing so…and landed on telling it from the view point of the character that represented Tina. He shuffled the stereotypes around a bit, his mentor at NYADA positively aghast that he hadn’t actually wrote them in on purpose and highlighted them, instead of just basically writing the characters as he knew them and overdramatizing the situations, and even that he didn’t have to do much. The character he wrote to represent Finn, though, he kept pretty intact…he just removed some of bullying. Martin, who played Sawyer, even looked like Finn. Kurt didn’t cast anyone…so the resemblance was uncanny for a long time.

He’d cried the first time he saw it…because although they made it a comedy, they still kept issues in that were of a more serious nature. They kept the teen pregnancy, they kept some bullying, they kept the social construct of the club being outcasts, they kept the issues surrounding coming out in a small town, and being anything other than white. They wrote several options for the character based off Artie, dependent on who came out to try out and went with a young man with an artificial leg and arm on his right side of his body.

He’d wanted to keep the story of Beth’s name, so he’d written Puck and Shelby and Quinn for permission. They had all agreed…so Kurt managed to get permission to use the song in the play. It hadn’t been easy, heck he’d had to go and explain in person but he’d managed. It wasn’t the only non-original song in the play, it was about a glee club after all, but it was the most important and the only one without other options.

He walked through the back stage area once more, making sure everything was ready to go and all the stage crew was prepared. He spoke one last time to the cast before they took their spots. Then he left for the light booth. He and the producer had discussed it and Kurt decided that was where he’d view from. He had all faith that everyone who had worked so hard for this night would pull it off just fine.

Kurt sat down and pulled on a set of headphones halfway so he could hear what was going on backstage.

“Why are you up here, again?” Carlos, his head of lighting asked.

“I can watch from up here and concentrate on the show, making notes for changes and what goes over well with the audience and not watch my family’s faces instead. If we want this to go farther than this theater…maybe even to Broadway…we need to know how the whole of the audience reacts.”

“You don’t think your family will react like everyone else?” Carlos asked.

Kurt shrugged.

“Depends on how hard some of it hits home, I guess.” Kurt said.

The house lights went down and then the curtains opened for the first number. It was one of the original numbers and involved watching the main characters being pushed and shoved as they tried to get into the school and avoid the jocks. Each sang of the ways they tried to avoid notice, with other ‘out cast’ kids singing their suggestions as well. The scene ended with the character based of Kurt coming back out of a dumpster he didn’t avoid dripping with noodles and counting off the price of the lost outfit while the Tina and Artie character helped him out.

Kurt swore he heard his dad’s gasp.

However the audience in general laughed like he had hoped.

In fact throughout the play the audience laughed when he’d had hoped they would and even a few times when he wasn’t sure if the joke would play well or not. They seemed to enjoy the original songs as well as the well-known bits. They cheered for characters and celebrated their successes. The finale was as grand as he had hoped and his cast had been just as perfectly cast as he had hoped.

He’d gone down from the light booth just before the end so he could see his Dad’s and Carole’s (and Sam’s and Adam’s and Elliot’s) faces. His dad was crying…and Puck was crying. (So was Carole but he’s rather expected her to be.) Beth wasn’t crying, she was laughing and cheering like most of the rest of the audience, but Kurt wasn’t sure how much of her story Beth knew. He was able to see the curtain calls and the audience during them.

If this was all he got from the show…this one night…it was worth it to see the pride on his dad’s face and to hear the crowd go wild and see Puck with Beth, trying to explain why he was crying. It was better than a 10 yr. reunion could ever dream of being.


End file.
